Is Organic Marketing Dead? Here’s What’s Replacing It (and How You Can Still Win)

Jennie Wright [00:00:02]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the acquire podcast, where we get into list building and lead generation sales, marketing strategy growth. And even in 2025, I’m starting to get into this conversation about scaling and just really exponential growth in your business. And it doesn’t matter where you are in your business right now. If you are starting out, this podcast is going to give you a lot of insight. And if you are further along, like I am, I’m in my heading into mall, I’m in my second decade, thirteen years, I think thirteen and a half years now in the business, then you’re going to also learn a lot about systems and processes and ways that you’re going to be able to make those tweaks that can create a really successful launch or list growth or any of the things that we kind of need at this level in order to continue to grow, but also not to feel bogged down. And this episode is it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be interesting because I have been thinking about this nonstop since a conversation that I had, Thursday of last week.

Jennie Wright [00:01:08]:
And so I am kind of titling this episode sort of like is organic marketing dead because this is the conversation that I had. And so let me sort of set the scene for you. I had two conversations last week that sort of preempted this. One of them was with a potential client who runs an AI. Company. Well, the company is not about AI, but the company and what they do, the service they provide is they set up AI systems in the business to make the business work more effectively. Really interesting to me, very, very on trend, very at the moment. And then the second conversation that I had was with a high conversion copywriter in the health and wellness industry.

Jennie Wright [00:01:51]:
Somebody who had worked in health and wellness, who’s written for magazines, and is now a high conversion, copywriter. Somebody who also had programs and products when they were a, personal trainer. And so conversations that I mean, and then funny enough, these are very different conversations, but the similarity that I found was a wondering about organic and is organic marketing still working and both those conversations. I don’t care how different they were. They really had the same undertones, you know, what’s happening, what’s replacing it. And I was bombarded with questions and I was super excited and happy to answer them because. This is my jam. This is what I love talking about.

Jennie Wright [00:02:34]:
So if you’re thinking in your head, if you’ve kind of noticed a trend of things changing with organic, I’m going to spill exactly how and what’s going on in our industry and then share how you can still ride the wave of organic. It’s there. It’s just different. Okay. It’s not gone and it’s not dead. It’s just different because the way that most people are doing organic, it’s dead for them. If you’re still approaching organic marketing the way that we were approaching it in 2019, or even in early twenty twenty, or honestly, even in 2022, you’re doing it wrong and it’s not going to succeed for you. So if you’re posting on social media, just to post, if you’re hoping that your followers will magically turn into leads as a result without a plan, without a structure, without a strategy, then you’re basically playing marketing lottery.

Jennie Wright [00:03:26]:
Okay. Social media lottery. And the big spoiler alert is, you know, if you gamble, you know, the house always wins. Unless you’re amazing at it. Well, in this case, it’s winning and you’re going to struggle. Right? So organic marketing is not. It’s not, this is my problem. This is, this is sort of like my laying it out for you.

Jennie Wright [00:03:50]:
Lazy organic marketing is 100% failing. So. Posting for the sake of posting, not having a planner strategy that is not working and it’s going to backfire and you’re going to feel like, look, Jenny, I tried, I posted twice on Instagram and look, nothing happened. Okay. Well, did you post with intentionality? Did you post with a strategy? Did you think about what the long term is and how this is going to play out? Yes or no. Most cases I’m going to get a no out of that. And I’m going to shout, I’m going to tell you right there. And then that’s where the problem is.

Jennie Wright [00:04:28]:
You need a smarter and a much more layered approach to visibility and lead gen in 2025 and beyond more than you’ve ever needed before. This is why this new level of organic is such a struggle for a lot of people. And a lot of people are really, really struggling with it. They’re really having a hard time because what was, you know, like I said, what was working? Isn’t it’s always evolving. It’s always changing. And I will tell you that I realized that organic marketing wasn’t working the same way at the end of twenty twenty four, I’d say in November and December, I just started working with a new company. And, I was a contractor at the time. Now I’ve been brought into the company as the head of marketing or a CMO role.

Jennie Wright [00:05:15]:
And I was looking at how they were organically marketing for a few different companies. And I thought, okay. There’s there’s gaps and opportunities. Now they had hired a really good friend of mine, Katie Brinkley to help them with social media. And Katie had employed her for post strategy, which does brilliantly by the way. And if you don’t know what it is, go and check out Katie Brinkley. She she’s got it going on, but. The company that they were doing the organic marketing for how to like, had a history of these organic sort of campaigns with issues, not really getting where they want it to be.

Jennie Wright [00:05:55]:
And this was the historical sort of result, but not wanting to spend money on, on, on paid. I get it. There’s no shade to that company. There’s no shade to any of that. But what I noticed is that the organic, the way it had been done, wasn’t really working. And that’s where the challenge just keeps coming out. Right. You know, and, and if you try and launch a product or program or service and it flopped because you posted on Instagram and what you thought should have been working, didn’t work.

Jennie Wright [00:06:26]:
And you thought posting on Instagram would have been enough. It’s shifted. And now you have to be feeling that like you have to be feeling that difference. Right? This is, this is where the struggle is. So organic reach isn’t dead. It’s just evolving. And I’m going to tell you where it’s evolving to. I’m lucky.

Jennie Wright [00:06:45]:
I get to be on the forefront of a lot of these trends and these changes that I see happening because I’m just in it every single day, All the time. And so posting for the sake of posting is dead. Strategic visibility is exactly where you should be playing. And like I mentioned a minute, a minute ago, Katie Brinkley was ahead of the curve on that with her for four post strategy. She even wrote a book about it. Again, go check that out. It’s no longer posting to be posting everywhere. It’s about being.

Jennie Wright [00:07:13]:
In the right spot in the right room in the right social media context, posting the right thing. Okay. So Instagram just in the first five months of 2025 or the four months in a bit, because we’re almost at the April now. We’re pretty much like the last days April. So Instagram organic reach has dropped 2.5% or actually, no, pardon me. Let me rephrase Instagram organic reach is approximately 2.5% for business accounts. And this comes from a study that Hootsuite did just this year. Okay.

Jennie Wright [00:07:47]:
Facebook pages are their organic reach has dropped even further, which is approximately 1.5%. Again, also based off that Hootsuite, sort of paper that they did. That’s shocking. That means if you’re posting on your Facebook page, not anybody really is seeing much. And if you’re posting on Instagram, organic reach being that low is crazy. Just absolutely crazy. Right? What what’s happening is the algorithm is forcing you to pay to play it’s. So think about it this way, when all these new social media apps came out back in the day and some that come out now, they give you a ton of exposure.

Jennie Wright [00:08:27]:
You can post once and get seen by thousands. That’s how they kind of suck you in. That’s what clubhouse was like. That’s what, you know, Instagram was like back in the day. That’s what threads was like when it first launched. That’s what even medium was like when you posted a blog on medium back in the day, thousands of people would see it. The algorithm rewarded you for posting because they’re brand new and they wanted to really engage those first people coming onto the platform and getting them to, to, you know, convert to that platform. That’s normal.

Jennie Wright [00:08:57]:
Right. But as a platform grows and as you have more users and as it gets more complex, They shift and that platform now wants to make money. So any platform that’s being built has either been built or funded through, seed rounds or having angel investors or having other investors and that’s millions and millions of dollars, potentially even more. And eventually those investors want an ROI on their investment. And so now you have to find a way to make money. So that’s where ads get inserted. And that’s where the pay to play model really, really grows. Now I’m not an expert.

Jennie Wright [00:09:35]:
And if I’ve said anything that is incorrect, please let me know. This is my understanding of how it works. And I don’t profess to be the expert on that particular side of things, but this has been my experience. Right. Platforms reward engagement loops. And what is an engagement loop? That’s where comments and DMS saves and shares happen consistently. That’s where there’s a lot of engagement happening. So you write your post.

Jennie Wright [00:10:04]:
Somebody likes it. Somebody comments you reply, they reply, they share, they save and so on. Right? So this shows that the post has a lot of organic potential and. It doesn’t have to be vanity metrics. It doesn’t have to be 95 people liked your post or two fifty people liked your post. It just has to be a good, A good set of likes and a good count of comments and so on. Right. It doesn’t have to be the vanity metrics of thousands and thousands.

Jennie Wright [00:10:38]:
It’s not about more content. It’s honestly about creating more connection. And I know that we harp about that in this space, but it’s what people, it’s what people need. That’s what people want. Right. And I will tell you right now that borrowing other people’s audiences is not the new visibility tool. It is the old visibility tool that just won’t go away. And I love that because it was one of my favorite things and I get to talk about it.

Jennie Wright [00:11:04]:
If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t talk about it. Honestly, if I didn’t think this was a strategy that worked, I honestly would just dump it and not talk about it anymore, but borrowed audiences still work. And this loops back to the conversation I was telling you about earlier with the copywriter and the AI company. The AI company wants to run a summit they want, and they want me to potentially be, you know, we’re in, we’re in talks right now and they want me to potentially be their strategist for producing their. Super exciting right now. This is a fully like this company deals with AI all the time. And so the entire summit is going to be built using AI, right? I’m talking from the landing page using, a product called lovely or lovable, lovable. So go check out lovable.

Jennie Wright [00:11:49]:
It’s kind of neat. You can pop in, you know, you can tell AI what you, what you want and it’ll create like a whole page. And they’re using a similar product to create all of the videos, for the landing page and confirmation page. This lovable thing, by the way, will make like your checkout page too. It’s insane how it’s really, really cool. And so they showed me an example of what they had already created, which was fab. I did see opportunities for improvement, especially in the copy, because again, it is AI and AI still struggles a little bit with high converting. So interesting.

Jennie Wright [00:12:22]:
Now this copywriter that I was speaking to gets asked to be on summits all the time and never saw the value of being a speaker on a summit. So we’ve got two different audiences, one person who wants to host and one person who keeps getting asked to be a speaker and didn’t find value. And with both people, the conversation about borrowing other people’s audiences came up and it was really interesting. The separation between the two, because I had to tell. The AI company, it’s cool that we’re going to run this thing entirely through AI if I, if I work with you. But I will tell you right now that there will be pushback from me about conversion. So I will push back if I don’t think the page is going to convert and we need to make some modifications, I’m going to push back. If I don’t think that the AI produced video on the opt in page is going to convert and that we have issues.

Jennie Wright [00:13:13]:
I’m going to push back if I think the order form isn’t going to convert and so on. Right. Because AI, as cool as it is, we still have functionality issues and we still have conversion issues in some respects. It’s really getting to the point that it’s, it’s pretty fricking cool. I was really, really impressed. But as soon as you know, you kind of get over the fact that you’re like, wow, this thing wrote this entire sales page and it looks really cool. And And then you start looking at the copy and you’re like, okay, things need to be done. And then talking to this copywriter who doesn’t believe in summits, which is fascinating to me.

Jennie Wright [00:13:50]:
And I asked like 50 questions about it. And what I discovered is that the people who had invited her to be on summits didn’t run their summits properly. Therefore she got no leads from it. Right. So she’d get one Z’s and two Z’s from being on a summit. Meanwhile, the summits that I produce most speakers end up getting between like 50 to 150, sometimes more leads for being a speaker on the summit. That’s my goal. And, and so we had this conversation and I kind of broke it down and I showed her how borrowing other people’s audiences is the way to go, that, you know, not just having a podcast or not just doing this and that is going to help.

Jennie Wright [00:14:29]:
And by the end of it, she was like, okay, I think I could definitely want to be a speaker on summits potentially even host her own. So it was this huge, this huge learning curve slash change slash. Opportunity for this person. And that made me so happy. And then The AI company was like, yeah. Okay. We definitely understand the need for higher conversion and how this would be possible. So it’s really interesting conversations happening that make me excited to kind of share this with you.

Jennie Wright [00:15:00]:
Right. So let’s talk about borrowed people, borrowing audiences and this visibility, because you only have two ways to build your list. In my opinion, you can either work your way or buy your way. Right. So you can work your way in with, you know, being on summits and bundles and having a podcast and all the different things that are going to help you generate leads. And again, that’s the multi pronged strategy that I really, really love, Or you can buy your way in with paid ads and I’m cool with the paid ad strategy. I’m actually quite warm to it now. A couple of years ago, I’ve been like paid ads suck.

Jennie Wright [00:15:33]:
But I’m, I’m much warmer to it because the reality is organic changing and paid ads have a place. Right. I I’m here to, to grow and change along with you and what I would have said a couple of years ago. And, you know, sort of put my stake in the ground. I’m quite happy to say we’ve got to move it because things have changed and they’re different. So I personally, myself grew my list faster with a single summit than I ever did posting daily for three months on Instagram back in the day, even when the. We’re in my favor. Okay.

Jennie Wright [00:16:09]:
I grew my list so much faster hosting a summit. I grew my list so much faster hosting a bundle. I grew my list so much faster by being on other people’s summits and bundles than I ever did posting on social media and doing it that way. One well placed bundle partnership like you being on a bundle or you being on a summit netted me personally more aligned leads than six months of me pushing organic reels on Instagram. And my reels were getting pretty good, you know, views and everything. Right. Me being on one person’s bundle. And it was a paid bundle to be quite honest.

Jennie Wright [00:16:49]:
It was a 90, I think it was 197 or $97 for me to be on that bundle. And I netted a excruciating amount of really good aligned leads that I was able to convert. I was super shocked, super happy, and it was so much more than I got for the last six months posting organic reels. Truly. So why does this work? Because you’re creating a transfer of credibility and authority transfer. When people try like people, you trust introduce you to someone you’re where you’re way more likely to listen to them. And I’ll give you an example. I get the privilege of working with another entrepreneur.

Jennie Wright [00:17:31]:
His name is Sean Q Sean Quintero. And over the years of knowing Sean, he has introduced me to a lot of people and given me amazing referrals, which I have closed in business. Okay. Super appreciative of that relationship. So now when I get a DM from Sean and I do about once a month, and I get to work with him, in, in his company abundance worldwide. I’m I’m the CMO in that company, but the personal relationship that Sean and I have developed over the years, if Sean sends me a DM and says, Jenny, I’d like to introduce introduce you to someone. So then I just go, okay. And I book a call with that person.

Jennie Wright [00:18:10]:
I don’t ask anymore. I don’t question it because I trust Sean to put me in front of the right people because he has in the past and it’s worked out. Right. So when people you trust introduce you to somebody that they trust or that they’ve developed a relationship, you’re way more likely to listen and you’re more inclined to buy right. People are really leaning into curated spaces, curated relationships, and not the endless noise that we get from posting on social media. They just do right. And that leads me to talk about something else. That’s really working very, very well right now.

Jennie Wright [00:18:46]:
And this is again, why organic isn’t dead, but it is just playing differently. And that is micro communities because micro communities are outperforming public platforms by a huge margin. Right. So, you know, the, you know, the, the, the platforms like circle and secret and all these different ones, and GHL has their own community platform and so on. People are craving intimacy. They’re craving relationships. They’re not interested in broadcast. They’re not interested in being in massive Facebook groups anymore for the most part, unless it serves them.

Jennie Wright [00:19:19]:
I E getting a podcast placement or so on those, those groups still work. But people want that intimate group, that small group, you know? When you look at something like the rise of private podcasts and slack channels, and things like premium communities, like school has and mighty networks. In 2025, those has been growing exponentially. I have seen it not only through my own eyes, but also through a lot of reading I’ve been doing that. Those are really, really happening. Okay. And what you can do to kind of jump on this bandwagon is to maybe not make that Facebook group on, or that. Yeah.

Jennie Wright [00:19:58]:
Maybe not make that Facebook group and look at creating a VIP sort of community, either on school or, circle or create or any of those and building it that way. Right. Just for your summit, your bundle, your audience, the people that have paid you something for maybe your SLO and starting that way. Even if you start with 10 or 15 people and you go to a 50, that’s going to be able to be a size where you can nurture it more deeply, and not go so wide. It’s not about having 30,000 people in a group. Those vanity metrics are so dead at this point. Right. Because you’re not going to stand out in a group of 30,000 people.

Jennie Wright [00:20:42]:
You’re not going to get the type of heard seen felt feeling in a group that size. Okay. And if I was to compare paid and organic, this is what I would tell you because I have been comparing it lately. I’ve, I’ve launched, I’ve produced and launched a couple of summits recently where we did put a paid initiative in. And I want to talk about that with you because I think it’s really important when we talk about organic and if it’s dead or not. Okay. Paid ads are absolutely not dead, but now we’re looking at tiny strategic spends Equaling like, like not equaling versus a massive ad spend. So I have the fortunate ability to work with really great people.

Jennie Wright [00:21:26]:
And one of the people on my team, her name is Nicole. She’s a fabulous, fabulous, meta ads person. And she’s just whip smart. She’s incredible. I love working with her and, with a couple of my clients recently, we have started ad campaigns and we just did two summits in February. No one in February, ‘1 in March, the one in February. We did ad spend for a summit and we were getting $30 per complete registration. Now the client’s program off the backend was 10 ks and they sold a boatload of those.

Jennie Wright [00:22:01]:
So it well paid for the ads campaign, the summit I just did last, in, in, in, in March. No, sorry, April. That one, we were getting like $28 in the beginning. We got that down to $21 We got it down to $19 per cost per registration and, or your CPC. If you want to use the acronyms, I hate acronyms because I’m terrible at them. I was really pleased with that because we were selling a $27 VIP off the backend. Now we weren’t revenue positive off of that event, but what I loved for the fact that we did, we did get quite a few leads off of it and the paid was 50% of those leads. Shocker, but it was, it was great.

Jennie Wright [00:22:46]:
So as you, as you look at some, you know, and then when we look at retargeting these people and you maybe put like 5 to $10 a day at a retargeting campaign for the people that you’ve gotten from a summit or from a bundle, Somebody who’s even engaged in your last email campaign, even the cost to acquire leads drops dramatically because they’ve already warmed up to something that you’ve done, which is significantly better. If you just run cold ads, in my opinion, right? Paid ads are now a support strategy for organic pipelines, not replacing them, but in support of, so think of them as the helping hand that keeps your, organic system alive. Okay. So if you warm up your audience through summits or bundles, and then retarget them later with a small but highly relevant ad budget, you’re going to see a better bang for your buck. And this is happening. I’m seeing this happening extensively and everywhere. I really am. So if organic marketing isn’t dead, but you’ve been struggling personally, let’s talk about future proofing it.

Jennie Wright [00:23:46]:
And then we’re going to wrap this up. So future proofing your organic marketing is about you focusing on brand building and not just lead grabbing. I’ve said this before, and it is so true. You should not be having transactional relationships. It’s not just about, you know, and I get, and how do I say this? I get a lot of people asking me to be on their events, which is great. I love that. And thank you. And please keep those offers coming because I am fascinated and enthused and I love to be on them with the caveat that it’s not transactional.

Jennie Wright [00:24:25]:
Don’t use me and don’t use anybody for their clout. Okay. Or for their expertise in that way. I will absolutely like bend over backwards for somebody who wants me to be on their event that shows that they actually care about who I am and what I do and my expertise. And not just the fact that I am a mouthpiece about lead gen and I come with a pretty good sized list. Okay. I don’t want that, but I will absolutely work for somebody and do something amazing and post and promote and all the things for somebody who actually understands and is interested and wants to connect with me on a deeper level. Hands down.

Jennie Wright [00:25:07]:
We’ll do it every day, all day. Right? Because they’re 10, they’re taking time to build trust with me and building trust is your best marketing asset. The more trust you have in the marketing space, the more results you will get. If you can build up that piggy bank of trust in your, in your niche, in your realm, you’re going to have a much better go with things a %. And email list growth, plus authority positioning, plus thought leadership equals more hands down than real views or, you know, your TikTok views or anything. So if you can consistently build your list, if you can consistently position yourself as the authority in your niche, and if you can consistently show that you are a thought leader in your space, you will get people, people will come your way. Because you spent the time building up that trust. And you’re also putting yourself in the right rooms.

Jennie Wright [00:26:06]:
Okay. It’s this is part of that multi pronged strategy that I talk about a lot, because if you do this and you create this and you show up in the right spots, people will absolutely want to continue hearing from you. Trust me, you know, in 2025, people don’t need more content. They need the right content from the right people that they can either trust or build that trust with. And I want that to be you. Make sense? So kind of wrap this up. Organic marketing isn’t dead, but what used to work is dead and how you need to approach it is completely different. You need to look at connections and collaboration and creating strategic touch points.

Jennie Wright [00:26:47]:
Those are the keys to success right now and building up trust. So also having multiple pipelines that nurture before you pitch in every way you can think of exhaustively. Think about it and think ecosystem, not megaphone. Okay. How can you nurture people and keep them in? I was talking to somebody, potential client last week, and I said, I want to have multiple doors into my ecosystem and no exits. And not that I don’t want people to leave. I will gladly say, if you don’t want to be in my community a %, you know, be on your way. No problem.

Jennie Wright [00:27:22]:
But I don’t want people leaking out because I haven’t paid attention to where the exits are and I haven’t nurtured people so that when they get to that exit, if it’s, if it’s not a fit for them, they go. But if it is a fit for them and it’s just my fault, I haven’t nurtured them, but they stay. Right. And if you want to look at growing your list in a better, smarter way this year, I suggest you go binge on episode 35, which is how to craft irresistible lead magnets. And it’s my insider tips on building trust. And then that should tie everything together for you from what we talked about. And then if you want help building your summit or launching your bundle or marketing strategy and launching your products, talk to me. If it seems like I’m a fit to talk to, if the way I talk and the way that I communicate gets through to you in a way that makes you feel empowered and makes you feel good and also curious how I can help, I would love to be that person to help you.

Jennie Wright [00:28:19]:
And you, there’s a link to get in touch with me in the show notes, or you can go to jennywright.com and find a way there. Or you can come find me on Instagram or LinkedIn and chat with me, through DMS there as well. I hope you found this interesting and helpful. If you’ve listened this far, please feel free and, subscribe to the podcast wherever it is that you’re listening. I would love to encourage you to leave a review. I’ve been getting some reviews lately that I just adore, and I appreciate people so much for leaving them. And I’m going to have like an episode, probably, my next solo. I might read some of them out.

Jennie Wright [00:28:51]:
And just as an FYI, we are getting super close to the choir to our one hundredth episode, which is insane. Insane. This is, this is right here that we’re doing right now. This episode right now is episode 85. So I’m going to hit 100 episodes, geez in early, no mid August, I think. Right. So it’s a lot sooner than I think. And I’m actually already planning my one hundredth episode and I think I know who I’m going to have as my guest.

Jennie Wright [00:29:24]:
I’m pretty sure it’ll be great. So thanks so much for listening everybody. I hope you found this helpful and we’ll see you all soon. Take care.